The house in South Jersey is almost vacant.

Sunlight streams through the wooden plantation blinds in the dining room, basking the immaculate wood floors in an orange glow and flooding the room with a brightness that only accentuates its emptiness. Fuji, a caramel-colored Chinese shar-pei pup, scampers and slides across the floor, inspecting the molding with his wrinkled nose. This isn't home, it's merely lodging, so there's no point in decorating. All the good stuff -- the Harleys, the horses, the nine-hole golf course -- is back in Phoenix, where the mercury never falls below 60 and humidity isn't part of the vernacular. Jeremy Roenick had a high-paying, low-pressure job in a city where the hockey fans never get belligerent. So when Roenick told his wife, Tracy, in June 2001 that they were leaving their little slice of paradise and going east to rough-and-tumble Philadelphia, she said, "You'd better win that f--ing Cup."

	Until Jeremy wins a cup in Philly, he's got only one friend.

That matched Philly's sentiment exactly.

It was Bob Clarke, the Flyers' throwback general manager, who lured Roenick away from that desert oasis to the insane asylum on Broad Street as a finishing touch on the machine he'd designed to dominate the Stanley Cup playoffs. Roenick was the anti-Lindros -- a gritty, hard-nosed, media-friendly, low-maintenance centerman. Equal parts smile and snarl, this was a blue-collar guy coming back to a blue-collar town where he could muck things up in front of the net, shrug off a stick to the face and tip an impossible puck past the goalie -- with a bow to the adoring crowd.

Even though the club has yet to win the Stanley Cup under Clarke's 15-year stewardship, the Flyer faithful believe there's something in Clarke's karma that's linked with winning the grail. There isn't a fan in town who can't picture Clarke skating with his arms in the air after scoring that OT goal against the Bruins in the 1974 Finals. The helmetless head, the long blond hair, the maniacal grin rendered toothless by a butt end or a puck or a fist (or all three) in one of the corner battles that made Clarke as much an institution in Philly as the Liberty Bell: a little cracked, but loved nonetheless.

As a kid in Boston, Roenick watched the Broad Street Bullies beat up on his hometown Bruins. "They were the ugliest, scariest bunch of guys I've ever seen," says Roenick. "But they typified what hockey was meant to be like."

That was the attitude Roenick took into the NHL. In 1988, his rookie year in Chicago, JR was a 158-pound runt. Tyrannical coach Mike Keenan called him out, demanding more physical play. Roenick, scared to death of losing his job, answered the call. In the 1989 Norris Division finals, he took a nasty high stick from Blues D Glen Featherstone. Then, in an effort to increase the power play from two minutes to four, Roenick stuck out his tongue and revealed the bloodied, shattered fragments of his front teeth to referee Kerry Fraser. Worked, too.

It was that mean streak, Roenick's "I'm not afraid of anybody" attitude, his willingness to play the body and sacrifice his own, that attracted Clarke. "If you start taking crap from people, there will be a line of guys waiting to go after you," Clarke says. "If you're afraid, they sense it, and it doesn't matter how good you are."

When Roenick arrived in Philly, he knew what was coming. The Flyers had gone Cupless for 27 years, and the city was bursting with expectations. The fans lived up to their reputation and delivered the same message as the missus. "They'll yell at you, scream at you, call you names, call your wife names, call your mother names," says Roenick. "If you don't have thick skin, you won't make it in Philly." (Upon entering First Union Center, check your brotherly love at the door.) The GM can smile and say that the fans don't compare his current team to the legendary Broad Street Bullies, but Philly is Fight Town, and every native revels in it. Just try and cut the line at Pat's Cheesesteaks on Ninth and watch the local clientele check your butt to the back of the line. Dave Schultz (Bully-in-Chief) may have hung up his sweater decades ago, but his spirit lives on.

After five years in Phoenix, where the Coyotes often felt like another desert mirage amid the cacti and golf courses, Roenick needed Philly's Cup hunger. But in the beginning, Clarke's plans faltered: The Flyers went 4–5–2 in November. The power play was struggling, and they couldn't string together back-to-back victories. In true Philly style, the fans were showing their frustrations, booing their underachieving club in their own inhospitable, intolerant building. Roenick, the new guy in town, publicly supported the one-dimensional tactics of Bully-turned-coach Bill Barber. "We have to support each other, work hard, play physical," he said. "It's up to the players to get into other guys' faces."

The team responded to that verbal kick in the rear. Philly went 25–9–2–2 over the next three months, including an eight-game win streak in mid-January. By March 1, the Flyers ruled the Eastern Conference, opening a gap between themselves and their longtime rivals, the Bruins. Roenick was the team leader in points and in the dressing room. Clarke watched every night from the rafters with a hint of that maniacal grin -- the mad scientist keeping an eye on his experiment. But then, as in every mad scientist movie, something went terribly, terribly wrong.

In early March came the split lip -- 27 stitches inside and out, swollen into a sneer. It was a miracle that the slap shot off the stick of Lightning wing Ben Clymer didn't knock out a few of JR's already-porcelain teeth, or further damage his already-titanium jaw. (He looked so bad that the History Channel canceled his scheduled interview for a Heroes of Hockey segment.)

Five games later, Clymer struck again. This time, he sent Roenick crashing to the ice with a devastating hip check. "I stayed down, and I never stay down," said Roenick. "I remember thinking, 'This is it,' and I could hear my wife saying, 'You'd better be able to play.' " Roenick left the First Union Center on crutches with a partial right ACL tear. Team doctors said four weeks, but Roenick vowed to be back in two, in time for the end of the regular season and, more important, the playoffs.

When Roenick returned just 15 days later, the Flyers had already begun the 5–7–2 tailspin that would cede first place in the East to the Bruins. Their $56 million power play finished 28th in the league, and their scoring woes followed them into the playoffs. Roenick, Simon Gagne, John LeClair and Mark Recchi, who combined for 101 goals in the regular season, couldn't muster a single point in their first-round series against Ottawa. The Flyers were baffled by the Senators' neutral-zone trap and disabled by their penalty kill. In five games, Ottawa goalie Patrick Lalime stopped 135 of 137 shots. Win the Cup? The Flyers seemed intent on losing it. In Game 4, Flyers goalie Roman Cechmanek, fed up, skated to center ice, yelling in Czech at his lethargic teammates and gesturing as if he wanted to be pulled. He had to be talked back into his net by defenseman Eric Desjardins. When backup Brian Boucher started Game 5, the wedge was driven deeper into Clarke's team as players sided with one goaltender or the other. In a 4-1 series defeat, the only unifying force on the team was the collective disrespect for Barber and his coaching system.

For the second time in as many years, the Flyers had bowed out of the playoffs in the first round in particularly embarrassing fashion. Clarke fired his fourth head coach in five years and turned to Ken Hitchcock, the man who brought the Stanley Cup to Dallas in 1999. The man who transformed Stars C Mike Modano from a perimeter-skating, cherry-picking, high-scoring pretty boy into one of the best two-way forwards in the game. The man Clarke believed could repair the damage and mend his divided locker room.

The man for whom Roenick reportedly had vowed never to play.

***

Roenick and Hitchcock actually go back a little. In the summer of 1996, Chicago's beloved grunt, the kid hockey player who lit up the league with 100-point seasons and shared billboards with Michael Jordan and Sammy Sosa, landed in Phoenix because of a contract squabble. Roenick then became the only player in NHL history to lead his team in goals, assists, points and PIMs in consecutive seasons.

	After last season, things can only get better for Roenick.

It was in Phoenix that Hitchcock -- then the coach of the Coyotes' bitter division rival, the Stars -- and Roenick got their relationship off to a rocky start. In March 1999, Roenick leveled the revered Modano with a high hit that left the Stars seeing blood, Modano seeing stars (seven stitches above his swollen left eye) and JR seeing the rest of the night off. Not a month later, Stars hulking defenseman Derian Hatcher slammed Roenick into the boards in a premeditated payback that left Roenick's jaw fractured in three places. "Our games against Phoenix were just vicious," says Hitchcock. "There was a genuine hatred there, but there was always a grudging respect. And Jeremy was always at the top of the heap."

But now it's Hitch's heap. Last summer, amid a swirl of rumors stoked when Modano told a Dallas radio station that Roenick had refused to sign with the Stars because of Hitchcock, Clarke brought the coach to Philly. Roenick was indignant at the gossip: "I never said that. I don't go to a team because of coaches. I go because of a team's potential to win. I don't care if he yells and screams at me. All I want out of a coach is respect."

It looks like he's already got that. Hitchcock has placed Roenick, along with Recchi, LeClair, C Keith Primeau and D's Desjardins and Eric Weinrich, at the head of his class. That Gang of Six is the medium between the coach and the players, hammering home the coach's messages and setting dissenters straight before their negativity can divide the locker room. The job requires that each leader buy completely into Hitchcock's system.

"I have absolutely no personal goals," Roenick says. "They are all team-oriented." Hitchcock's plan for Roenick involves a ton of ice time in different situations and at different positions, and a slight tweak to Roenick's game. The in-your-face Bobby Clarke attitude -- the physical recklessness on the ice that so endears everyone to JR -- takes its toll as an aging player approaches the last 30 games of an 82-game schedule. So Hitchcock wants Roenick to focus his abundant energy on the finer details of the game. He'll always have his edge, but he'll be playing hard-smart, like Detroit's revered captain, Steve Yzerman. Says Hitchcock, "Yzerman works with every player on the team, he plays right wing, he plays left wing, he plays the point on the power play, he plays down low, he kills penalties, he blocks shots, he does everything. Jeremy has the potential to be just like Steve. His biggest challenge is to be prepared to sacrifice anything for the hockey club." ***

Roenick is entering his 15th season in the NHL. He is 32 years old, a seven-time All-Star and a two-time Olympian. But the Stanley Cup has been as elusive for him as it has been for Philadelphia. "In '92 [with the Blackhawks], we lost in the Finals, and I thought, 'Okay, I'll be there again,' " he says. "Now it's been 10 years, and I haven't gotten close. My time is running out. It doesn't matter how many points I have or what I've done in this league. It's all about championships."

He could have had one already. In June 2001, when Roenick was a free agent, he and Tracy checked out Detroit. They were in a hotel room when a call came from Flyer Rick Tocchet, Roenick's old Coyote buddy. "He needed this type of hockey and this type of city," says Tocchet. "In Philly, people live and die with wins and losses." Half an hour later, Roenick was a Flyer. A year later, Yzerman and the Red Wings won their third Cup in six years. Says Roenick, "I didn't once look at Detroit and say I could have been there. That's how you send yourself to the nuthouse. I made a decision and I stick by it, because I think I can win one here."

His coach agrees. There is no goalie controversy -- Boucher was traded to Phoenix and Cechmanek is No. 1. Hitchcock has hammered home his defensive system, and showed he means business by initiating a 30-second rule -- be 30 seconds late for anything and you're sent home. Roenick means business too. Over the summer, he added eight pounds of muscle and stripped his body fat down to 9%. He knows he's getting older. He knows he has to work twice as hard to take the pounding and twice as hard to keep his lungs. But now he wants twice as much to win that f--ing Cup.

He and his wife and Bobby Clarke and the city of Philadelphia.

This article appears in the October 28 issue of ESPN The Magazine.